Please include the word severe whenever diagnosing your patient using the 2016 Sepsis-3 SOFA criteria.
- The Society of Critical Care Medicine supports the Sepsis-3 (SOFA) scoring system to diagnose severe sepsis.
- The 2016 JAMA paper suggests that all sepsis is severe sepsis when using the SOFA criteria.
The patient must have an acute change in physical exam and/or laboratory findings consequent to infection to meet the criteria. Remember the diagnosis must be Present On Admission (POA) to be included in CMS (Medicare’s) calculated expected mortality.
